Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance vol. 19 (34), 2019; http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.19.08 ∗ Nicole Fayard “Making Things Look Disconcertingly Different”: In Conversation with Declan Donnellan1 Abstract: In this interview acclaimed director Declan Donnellan, co-founder of the company Cheek by Jowl, discusses his experience of performing Shakespeare in Europe and the attendant themes of cultural difference, language and translation. Donnellan evokes his company’s commitment to connecting with audiences globally. He keeps returning to Shakespeare, as his theatre enables the sharing of our common humanity. It allows a flesh-and-blood carnal interchange between the actors and the audience which directly affects individuals. This interchange has significant consequences in terms of translation and direction. Keywords: Declan Donnellan; Cheek by Jowl; Shakespeare in Europe; Translation; Direction; Archetypes; Brexit. I Declan Donnellan is well-known as “one of the most original directors working in theatre today” (Le Figaro). He co-founded the company Cheek by Jowl in 1981 and is its joint Artistic Director with his life partner and the company designer, Nick Ormerod. Both artists are renowned for staging innovative productions focused on the skills of the actors and have been repeatedly acclaimed as “responsible for some of the most imaginative and revelatory classical performances [seen over the past] decades” (New York Times). They produce work in English, French and Russian and have performed in about 400 cities in fifty countries over six continents (Cheek by Jowl). Donnellan has to date directed over thirty productions, with half from the Shakespearean repertoire, such as the world-acclaimed As You Like It (1991) with Adrian Lester, performed with an all-male cast, The Winter’s Tale (Maly ∗ University of Leicester, UK. 1 Nicole Fayard wishes to thank the University of Leicester for a period of study leave during which this article was written. © by the author, licensee Łódź University – Łódź University Press, Łódź, Poland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 140 Nicole Fayard Drama Theatre of Saint-Petersburg, 1999), Romeo and Juliet (2004) and Hamlet (2015) for the Bolshoi Ballet, and in 2018 Pericles Prince of Tyr (Maison des Arts de Créteil). The company is also dedicated to the staging of the European classics in their source language and in translation. Acclaimed performances include Le Cid (Avignon Festival, 1998), Boris Godunov (Moscow, 2006), Andromaque (Théâtre du Nord, Lille, 2009), Hayfever (Savoy Theatre, 1999), Antigone (The Old Vic, 1999), Verdi’s Falstaff (Salzburg Festival, 2001). Cheek by Jowl is one of the Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Companies and since 2005 has been an Artistic Associate at the Barbican in London where it has an office. Donnellan also formed a company in Moscow at the Chekhov International Theatre Festival in 2000 and has affiliations with Lev Dodin’s Maly Theatre in Saint-Petersburg and the Bolshoi Ballet. In France, they were invited by Peter Brook to work at the Bouffes du Nord in Paris in 1995 and are now associated with the Théâtre des Gémeaux near Paris. Donnellan is also the author of the play Lady Betty (1989), adapts plays for his companies, and his first feature film Bel Ami, co-directed with Nick Ormerod, was released in 2012. He wrote The Author and the Target, first published in Russian in 2001 and subsequently translated into fifteen languages, including English, French and Mandarin. The volume is an influential guide for actors providing invaluable insight into the director’s and actors’ craft as well as their relationship with the audience. In recognition for his ground-breaking work and services for the arts, Donnellan has received multiple awards in the UK and internationally, including in France, Russia, the US, and Italy.2 He and Nick Ormerod both received OBEs in 2017. Cheek by Jowl’s unique association with theatrical partnerships across Europe reflects the company’s commitment to connecting with audiences globally, making its work emblematic of the theme of this special issue. This interview with Declan Donnellan took place in October 2017. It took the form of a semi-guided exchange structured around his experience of performing Shakespeare in Europe as well as matters pertaining to language and translation. Whilst these themes relate to both the company’s achievements and the subject matter developed in this volume, they are especially relevant to the new challenges brought about by Britain’s likely imminent departure from the European Union. At times our exchange went into unexpected directions, 2 Donnellan was the first non-Russian director to receive the prestigious Golden Mask award at the Moscow Festival in 1997. In 2003 he was made Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres―a prestigious award in recognition of significant contribution to the arts and literature―for his work in France. In 2013 he shared the highest award of the Sibiu International Festival in Romania with Ariane Mnouchkine and Eugenio Barba in recognition of their contribution to international culture and the arts. © by the author, licensee Łódź University – Łódź University Press, Łódź, Poland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 “Making Things Look Disconcertingly Different”: In Conversation with D. Donnellan 141 providing truly fascinating insights. However, for reasons of space, not all material was able to be included in the transcript. Declan Donnellan’s view that the theatre reveals “what is eternal in the way our species is made” and helps us “share our empathy” takes us back to the very roots of Greek tragedy, with its realistic recognition of the commonalities and predictability of the human experience across time and space. The assumption in Greek theatre that all humans are imperfect is especially reflected in Donnellan’s interest in the themes of unexplained violence and mental illness. These are topics which, for instance, haunt The Winter’s Tale, which Donnellan first directed in Russian in 1997 and produced again in English in 2016-17, as well as Pericles (2018). What he sees as the destruction that human beings mete out on the people they love relates to the often-unarticulated anger suffusing contemporary societies. Thus, his fascination with people’s inherent capacity for violence led us to discuss the 2017 terrorist attacks in Manchester and Las Vegas, UK politics, Brexit, and the pernicious impact of consumerism on our lives. The pivotal theme bringing these acutely germane topics together is, of course, Shakespeare. What makes both the theatre and Shakespeare unique for Donnellan is their ability to reveal our own hidden primitive forces by showing us people saying what we do not dare say or do. This is what makes it profoundly political. Shakespeare especially provides an antidote to the general sense of depression breeding the anger that tears our societies apart. Envisioning the theatre as the sharing of one’s common humanity is a profoundly political act, especially in the ways in which it helps to clarify Donnellan’s production choices. It entails that seeking to communicate specific ideas via a production could be seen as inauthentic.3 Thus, Donnellan emphatically believes that a play is about deconceptualization and defends his own directorial right to “shar[e] with the audience my incomprehension with their incomprehension.” Incomprehension and the mystery of things here provide compelling forms of communication, which directly correlate to the need of human beings to connect with each other and to probe, as suggested above, the complexities―and vulnerabilities―of human nature. By performing Shakespeare’s plays, Donnellan’s aim is to demonstrate that the human need to share also includes our failure to communicate with each other, as well as our capacity for self-deception. This has significant linguistic as well as psychological resonances: Donnellan’s analysis of Shakespeare’s drama illustrates the extent to which “we also use words to un-communicate”. Donnellan’s forensic analysis of Shakespeare’s texts and characterization thus focuses on the ways in which words can be used to obscure or distort meaning. This analysis is based on two overarching principles. The first is that “the important thing about Shakespeare 3 Authenticity is to be understood in the existentialist sense of personal responsibility (the opposite of alienation). © by the author, licensee Łódź University – Łódź University Press, Łódź, Poland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 142 Nicole Fayard is what he leaves out”: for Donnellan, the purpose of Shakespeare’s soliloquies, especially, is not necessarily to reveal the characters’ true thoughts or motivations. Rather―this is the second overarching principle of his analysis― in their speeches, Shakespeare’s characters lay bare their own lack of self- awareness. For Donnellan, “Shakespeare is all about self-deception. And you see the deception.” Such language analysis has strong critical and dramatic potential. Arguing that Macbeth, Othello or Richard III exemplify the dislocation governing human paradoxical behaviours, Donnellan offers us a compelling reading of the plays as a theatre director. Equally importantly, his awareness of the human psyche both in Jungian terms and through the language of transactional analysis4 presents the theatre as a potentially healing tool for individual spectators. In The Structure of the Psyche (342), Jung claimed that “all the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetype”, defining archetypes as universal patterns and images based on primitive and ancient myths that are part of the collective unconscious and from which we inherit patterns of behaviour.